The Iced Coffee Hour - Millionaire Dating Expert Reveals How To Get A Girlfriend ft. Kong Pham

Episode Date: October 7, 2020

Welcome to the 20th ever episode of the Iced Coffee Hour! Today we discuss important matters such as - How to get a girlfriend, how to start up a multi-million dollar business, and we review Jack's tinder profile. Enjoy! Add us on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/jlsselby https://www.instagram.com/gpstephan https://www.instagram.com/kong408 Send any voice submissions to [e-mail]  (10-15 seconds max) can be about anything- and we will respond in the next podcast! LIMITED TIME: Get 2 FREE STOCKS ON WEBULL when you deposit $100 (MINIMUM VALUE $8 up to $1600): https://tinyurl.com/yd9slfax Join the 2x weekly mentorship group: https://tinyurl.com/yaexko4o The Equipment used: https://tinyurl.com/y78py5g2 The YouTube Creator Academy:   Learn EXACTLY how to get your first 1000 subscribers on YouTube, rank videos on the front page of searches, grow your following, and turn that into another income source: https://bit.ly/2STxofv $100 OFF WITH CODE 100OFF  For Podcast Inquiries, please contact [e-mail] TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Start here 1:04 - Introduction 2:06 - How Kong Pham got started on YouTube? 9:04 - Subscription program for dating 12:26 - Kong talks about his startup “Jumpcut Studios” 16:47 - “Jumpcut Studios” revenue 28:02 - Dating advice for Jack 32:23 - Reviewing Jack’s Tinder profile 40:40 - Jack and Graham roleplay 45:27 - Kong’s credit score 50:54 - Where Kong invests his money? 55:54 - *Wait for it* Millennial Money 1:02:08 - Getting more confident  1:05:40 - Don’t start here *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan is part of an affiliate network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's happening, man. This is cool. I know. It's a dream come true. So welcome back to the 20th ever episode of the iced coffee hour so far. We've made something like $5,600, something crazy like that now from the podcast in ad revenue. Meet Kevin's episode by far wins. I think his episode has made like $600 so far. So Kevin, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

And today we have... Do you get a cut of this or is that a... Absolutely not. You can keep this $20 bill right there. Okay. At the end of you. Oh, yeah, that's yours. I'll take it.

I'll take it. You could keep that. But today we actually, we have an amazing guest. I say that every episode, but this one I mean it. What? How do I, I don't even know how to introduce you because you've changed the channel name. So let's just say this. I want to call you a viral internet sensation, business owner, and now just,

A little bit of everything, I would say. Yeah, a Renaissance man, if you will. What's up, guys? My name is Kong. I am the founder of an old channel called Simple Pickup. I've since changed the name to Kong Fam. I also now run a venture-back startup called Jump Cut, where we make online courses.

Our most popular one is called Viral Academy, where we teach people how to start and grow their own YouTube channel. So I actually have been watching your channel now for almost 10 years. You started out with a channel that's called Simple Pickup, where you made these really hilarious, I don't want to even call them skits, because they weren't skits, but you would pick different ideas or concepts

to go to, say to women on the street and then see if you can get their phone number. Yeah, yeah, the concept was, you know, I grew up as a very introverted, like, shy guy, very, you know, typical Asian family where you don't really voice, like you can't be too loud, you've got to keep to yourself.

So I had a hard time, basically, dating for a very long thing. time. And it wasn't until probably around college that I kind of went on this almost like journey of of not only trying to like get girls because that sounds very surface level, but it was more of like trying to be a better me, trying to be a more confident person, showing my actual real self and not being afraid of that versus just like being the shy guy who stays in the corner all the time. So I went through that journey. It changed my life and I wanted to make a channel that where people could see that look, these things that you think are really difficult,

for example, going up to somebody who you think is attractive and trying to start a conversation with them, it's really not that hard. It's actually quite easy. So we turned that into a YouTube channel essentially, and yeah, you know. Who had that idea to turn that into a channel? I think, well, my college roommate at the time, Jesse and I were like, entrepreneurs are hard and we would always think like what what can we do as what how can we start a business right and we had all these ideas um a couple of them failed that we tried to do but the one that worked was

making a youtube channel so this was right when youtube was started paying people um you know they just they had just come out with it like a year or two ago and we said hey why don't we jump on this bandwagon because we watch youtube way more than than than tv or movies it was me yeah yeah exactly right So it's like, I think I can know, I think I'd do this. I think I know what works on YouTube, what goes viral. So we put out a video and instantly it got about, I want to say, 50,000, 100,000 views, something like that. And then we said, I think this is it. Spent that whole summer making more videos, got a bunch of viral hits.

And then literally the semester after that, we dropped out of school. So the first video you ever made got 50,000 views right off the bat. So, quote unquote, first, we made a couple ahead, like, before that that I believe we put out, but it just, one, I knew that it sucked as soon as it came out and, two, it didn't get any views. So technically, yes, it was the first video in the sense that, like, we really put it out and then we pushed it. Yeah, well, yeah, we push and tried to promote it. Whereas the other videos, we just kind of put it up there and we're like, um, okay, this is not really that great. How much did you make from that first video? How much did 50,000 views pay back then?

Not that much, dude. I look at your CPMs today and like the people doing it today. I'm like, what? You get that much money? So back then, like, we would be, so our content was also a little bit, like, we would swear in the videos. So, you know, sometimes we could get flags. I would say on average, we got about $1 to $1.50 CPM.

So every thousand views we would get about $1 to $1.50. Wow. Yeah. What was that first? At best, it was like we signed a contract with Machinima at that time. and they gave us $3. So that was the highs we ever got. Wow.

And that was like a good deal. But you were getting on some of these videos tens of millions of views. You had a few of them that were over 10 million views. Yeah, yeah. And then for those videos, the CPM actually went higher

for some reason. I guess it's just because more advertisers are advertising on viral videos. I don't know. But it would never go above like $2 CPO. Okay. What was the first video that you released,

the one that was successful? What was the concept? We got to be PG-rated. Oh, yeah. So can I swear on this podcast or? No, I would prefer not. Okay. If the occasional slip, Jack will edit it out.

We want to keep our highest CPMs. We don't want to be flat. We want to keep this as family friendly as possible. Should have had me on then. We just got to be getting. How about I almost can't explain it. Okay. So basically, it was called Asian private part pickup.

And I would have to say variations of this private part word in conversation casually before getting somebody's number. So, for example, I would say, hey, Jack, where can I... Jeez, I'm going to butcher it now. There's no way to say it. Yeah, there's really no way to say it. Yeah. Now, here's the interesting thing in all seriousness, I don't think you could make that video today. I think with the current environment,

that would not be okay. I think back then, it was tens of millions of views. Now you couldn't get away and say a lot of the things that you could back then. Well, you could. You just need the stones to keep it up there and not apologize for things. I think people are just, you know, there's definitely this wave of people who are really sensitive about these things. But I know plenty of comics, plenty of people who are still making really outrageous content. Dave Chappelle is one famous example, right?

You watch his specials, he's very, very polarizing. He's, you know, to the point where it's somewhat offensive. But he stands by. He says, I don't care. I'm not going to apologize for anything I say on this stage. So I think you can still do it. Okay. But you're going to get a lot of heat for it, for sure.

Fair enough. But so back then you were making these videos. And then when was the point that you realized, like you're going to move out? I remember you got a house in mid-city, L.A.? Did he all together? Where was that? It was, you mean our first place. It was in Van Nuys, I believe.

Okay. So this really, like, really pretty part of L.A. for people that don't live there. Well, some of it is. Okay. But the neighborhood we were in was there was literally bars on people's doors. But, you know, we said, look, let's commit to this. Let's do it.

It was four dudes that lived in a two-bedroom apartment where water would turn brown when we turned it on. in the morning. And we did that for about, I want to say like nine months or something like that. You know, just toughed it out, started making money. And eventually we were able to move into a bigger and better house and actually live comfortably. Did you graduate college at that time? No, no, dropped out.

So you were in college and then things were going well with the YouTube channel. So then you just decided to drop out and pursue this and move to Van Nuys with these other guys. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, you know, I think that's the thing that people get really wrong. too is that like they always say like hey look at Kong or like whatever whoever like they didn't go to college they dropped out of college I think if you're going to college you should do something on the side and once it takes off then drop out um guess who just dropped out I don't know if you've seen Jack just dropped out I heard yeah I heard yeah congratulations but you know you're you have something

that's going on for you right now and you know things you know your things are picking up you can see the trajectory and I think that's a good time to drop out but But, you know, if a lot of people always ask me on Instagram for some reason, like, should I drop out of college? I hate it. Blah, blah, blah. Well, start something on the side first and then do it. So, yeah, to answer your question, you know, we spent that whole summer basically trying to

get as many views as possible, trying to make money. And it was only once we got traction that we dropped out of college. And then you created a program that it was a monthly, right? $5 a month? Yeah. Yeah. How much did that make? I'm so curious, because now we can get all the details.

Yeah, so basically, for people that don't know, we had this kind of almost like entertainment channel where we would do these almost like prank videos, but we're, you know, cheesy pickup lines getting girls' phone numbers. And we had a subscription product on the back end where we would actually give advice, give more of a in-depth, have a more in-depth discussion on how to be more confident, right? How to get more dates. So at first we charge $5 a month for it and it eventually turned into, I believe $37 a month.

How much were you making? How many people pay $5 a month? When we first launched it, we made $15,000 for that month. Your first month. It might have been more than that. I forget. But it was under 50 for sure. And that was between four people.

Yes. Yeah, that's correct. So it sounds like a lot of money, but considering all our expenses and we share it, it really wasn't that much. But over time, we started building that more and more. We added more features to it. We added a community feature. We added podcast, things like that.

Increased the price of $37 a month and at its peak. I want to say we were doing about two, two and a half million per year on that. Just that. Yeah, just that program. How many people split that? Sorry, sorry. It was, gosh, I'm getting in mind. This was like seven, eight years ago.

I want to say it was two to two and a half million dollars per year. That plus our YouTube and brand deals. But 80% of it was coming from. from this program. Wow. So only about 10% of our revenue was coming from ad revenue. So you turned this in a few years into a $3 million a year business. Yeah, yeah, essentially.

And I think, you know, if we stuck with it, we could have grown it into a really, really big company. But I think at one point, you know, the things that we were doing within that community and also on YouTube started getting redundant. It started, we were kind of doing the same thing over and over again, but just rehashed in a different way. and I just stopped being fulfilled by that. I felt like the message we wanted to get across to, you know, lonely guys around the world

had already been accomplished. And I wanted to do something bigger. You know, as an entrepreneur, I'm sure you know as well as anybody. Like, you always want to do better. Like, you don't want to just do the same thing over and over. You're going to start a second channel. You're going to start this podcast. Like, you just want to do more and more.

So I think for me, it was starting a business that could have more impact on the world, number one and two, be a bigger home run, if you will. Then I noticed you... This is great coffee, by the way. I've watched your channel and, you know, I always judged you because I was like, there's no way this is better than Phil's coffee

that I get for $5. But, you know, you might have converted me. You might have converted me. This is not paid. I didn't pay you to say, I didn't give you a script to read. This is your real reaction. And you know what?

You actually used a light cream to coffee ratio. I would have got a little bit heavier on the cream, enhance some of the flavors. Yeah, yeah. The cinnamon toast crunch flavor that we have, but I'm glad you enjoy it. This is a business opportunity right here. We'll talk after. Deal.

Grams, grams coffee. 20 cent ice coffee. But you started then after all of that Jump Cut Studios. Yeah. I saw your ads. Yeah, yeah. A lot of people. A lot of ads.

We ran a whole ton of ads. Like literally millions of dollars worth. So explain what Jump Cut Studios. So Jump Cut Studios. So Jump Cut Studios. Well, it used to be called Jump Cut Studios. Then we changed it to just Jump Cut. The original goal of Jump Cut was to create online courses that weren't boring.

Because if you look at the world of online courses right now, it's basically a lot of people who are just talking to the camera, right? There's maybe some nice PowerPoint thing going on. But that's pretty much it. And, you know, coming from the world of YouTube, we were like, this is when we were transitioning from Simple Pickup. We wanted to come up with like what's our next big business idea. And coming from the world of making viral videos, we thought we could do better than that.

These guys making like online courses are so boring. And I thought that there was a really big opportunity here essentially to to help educate people in a really fun way. You know, you see people doing like that, doing that kind of stuff on YouTube all the time. That's why I got these tattoos that's inspired by Kurtz Kazat in a nutshell. Because they made science and physics and astrology really, really, really. really interesting to the average people to the point where they're getting tens of millions of views per video. And so we said, why don't we do that? And we can bring the world of YouTube into online courses to make it more entertaining. So that was the premise of the of the of the company. In 2016,

we went through Y Combinator, raised about $1.8 million in venture funding to get this company started. That's incredible. Yeah. Yeah. That's a lot of funding for Y Combinger. It was a wild ride. It was a wild ride. Well, no, sorry, sorry, why Combinator only give us, I want to say, 125,000? Okay, that seems to be, yeah, yeah, and then they have this thing called Demo Day where you pitch to investors and, and- Why do you need so much investor capital for that? We started a course of nothing. Why do you need so much money on that? Yeah, you had the audience.

I mean, all you had to do is is mention it on the channel and so we did. Okay. And then we got some traction and that's why we were able to raise $1.8 million. Why raise, why give away some of the equity in it? So because the production that we wanted to do was going to cost a lot of money. So I'll give you an example. We filmed the course with Justin Kahn, the founder of Twitch, right? He sold his, you know, worked on Twitch, worked on Justin.

TV and then turned it into Twitch and then sold it to Amazon for like a billion dollars. We did a course with him really cinematically. We interviewed a bunch of other entrepreneurs, some investors as well, had some really nice motion graphics on there, a really great B-roll that we filmed. And that whole course cost us about $500,000 to produce approximately. Jeez. Yeah.

So that just gives you the scale of how, and we didn't even get to do all the things we wanted. Wow. But that just gives you the scale of how much it would cost to do something like that. So what was that exactly for? Because I'm still a little confused on what exactly jump cut was. Was it like a company that would help people that create courses make the courses more entertaining? No, sorry, yeah. So let me, let's do a little bit more high level here. It was an online business school. Think of it like that. So one of the courses was this one called Art of the Startup, where Justin Con was teaching how to start a startup, get venture funding, find a co-founder, all that stuff. Our most popular course, the one that you saw a lot of ads for was called Viral Academy. We changed the name a couple of times throughout the years, but that's what it's most known as, which teaches people how to start and grow their own YouTube channel. That's what I did. The YouTube Creator Academy. I mean, link down below the description.

Very similar, yeah. Different than the YouTube one, because the YouTube one kind of gives you like a really high level of how to do it. But ours really goes into kind of like the frameworks that you can use to make really great content. How much was that?

Expensive, right? I think it was. Not if you got it at the beginning. It was $20 a month. So some people are still subscribed for $20 a month. Is there content still being produced to the... Not anymore, no.

So we've updated it like three or four times already. And now I, I think it's the best that it could be. But it is, it used to be $1,000. Yeah. Now we've lowered it. We have a lot of sales that lower to about 500. Okay.

Yeah. Wow. How much did that make? I'm just, I'm curious how much it made, how much of that you saved, where you spent your money. No.

And, you know, this is a cautionary tale for all the entrepreneurs out there. We were very caught up in like the startup mentality. Okay. Right. So for me, I didn't care, like, I'm not somebody who cares about money.

If I make over, let's say, get out. Yeah, I know, right? Get out. I'm on the wrong podcast. Take this away. Okay. No, but like, if I make more than, let's say, $100,000 a year, I'm, like, totally set. I'm happy.

I don't, I have enough to travel, and I can eat out with my friends without worrying about it. I'm totally fine. What I want to do is I want to build a big company and, you know, look back and kind of think of it as my legacy almost. Sure. Right. So that's a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing in the sense that you'll move fast at any cost, but it's a curse in the sense that we over extended basically what we believed we were capable of doing and ended up with a business model that was not built for that kind of growth. So going back to your question, how much money did we make? I might be getting these numbers a little bit wrong, but 2016, that's the year we went through Y Combinator. We did about two. $2 million in revenue. Okay.

The year after that, 2017, we did about $4 million. Might be like $4.5. And then the year after that, that was our best year, which was 2018, and we did $12 million in revenue. Wow. And about $5 million of that was profit in the sense that we had no clue what to do with it. Like we wanted to spend all our money so that we don't have to pay taxes, right? Like Amazon style.

Because if you make $5 million, you're paying like half. Trump lowered the taxes that year, so he made America great again. It's still half. California state income tax, all the other little bits and pieces, it's half. It was, yeah, it's about half, but it was less than it was before that. So, you know, we literally paid like $2 million in taxes. Right. But our goal was to be able to spend more than we made.

So then the next year, 2019, we're still in this growth mode thinking, all right, this is great, everything's going fine. We continue to ramp up ad spend. We hired a ton of people. We actually hired a hiring manager to help us hire more people. We had 100 people working for jump cut at one time. Almost 100 people. It was like 85 people. Wow.

And the issue was that our business model wasn't sustainable. Because you have to keep churning what's the new thing, right? Exactly. Exactly. And the other courses that we made weren't as big of a hit as Viral Academy. So, you know. To niche. That's what I learned on mine.

You got to appeal to the broad demographic out there. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think just like the subject matter of making YouTube videos was so, you know, foreign at the time. No one was really making a course for this that we were pretty much the only people that were doing it. And so eventually, you know, we started to launch more courses and we realized that was a one-off that works really, really well. And we grew our team a lot. banking on the fact that all these other courses would work just as well. Now, when we launched

the other courses, they worked well, but they didn't work well enough to support an 85-person team, right? And so, unfortunately, you know, late last year, I basically had to lay off a ton of, a ton of people. And we made the decision to essentially stop being a high growth startup, right? And we said, look, this is a nice small business. Let's keep it cash flow positive. And we'll work on another project that has better product market. Yeah. That's why I love the low overhead model for really, until honestly about three months ago, it was really just me.

Jack is now as of, about a month now, two months has it been full time? Since August 1st. Since August 1st, full time. Got a jack. I highly recommend everyone get a jack, by the way. Jack of all trades. But I just keep everything as simple as it could be. No office space.

don't have to pay for anything. It's just the same camera. Buy it used. Towels on the lights. Just buying things once. At one point, I think my overhead, some of the best months I've ever had was like three, four hundred bucks.

Total. Yeah. All my overhead. No, I totally get it. Like, when we were running simple pickup, that's kind of how we operated too. We just wanted, we just said, look, let's put as much money in our pocket as possible.

Because I grew up poor, so I was like, that like, I want this money. Yeah. And it's different, though, when you run a startup and you have investors, Right? Because now you're sending out an update every month and they're going, why isn't growth as good as last month? Why aren't you doubling your sales?

Why aren't you hire this person? Let's get on a call. So there's this like pressure. And then there's the external pressure from other peers who are, you know, doing really, really well. So they're kicking your ass. Dude, calm, you can do better than this. I'll help you.

I'll introduce you to the right people. So there's this kind of like pressure, you know, that's fire under your ass and grow, grow, grow under any circumstances. And again, I think it's a blessing at a curse. but for us overall, because the business, we overestimated how good the business model was. It ended up not as great for us in 2019. Yeah.

Why did you need 85 employees? Because realistically, I mean, I have no idea how big of an operation jump cut was. But for Graham and I, like Graham created the course. And then now to maintain the course, it's very, pretty low maintenance for the courses, at least on his behalf. Like, why do you, what were the 85 people doing? Yeah, I would.

say most of them, so out of the 85, about 50 of them were doing customer service. So we scaled up 50, a lot of customer service people in the Philippines. They spoke really great English, but you're only paying them like, you know, four or five bucks an hour, which is above the median pay there. And so most of them were on customer service because it's a pretty pricey course. And, you know, it's not like your course where people watch your videos. And then they're like, I like Graham, I'll go buy this. This is cold traffic that we're running ads to that we're saying, hey, go check out this course and buy it. So they have a ton of questions, and we train these customer service representatives to essentially answer all these, these really

nuanced questions. You know what I actually heard from somebody else? They said, if you don't get a 10% refund rate, you're not selling hard enough. Because the sale is supposed to be so impactful that people are just supposed to buy it without thinking about it. And when that happens, you get about a 10% refund rate. So if you get below that, you need to ramp up your marketing. and sell harder. Believe it or not. I don't do that, but I'm just saying that's from a marketing standpoint

that's typically what they recommend. Yeah. We kind of operated like that for a while. We had a pretty high refund rate, but we made a change to our refund policy where you can only get a refund now if you do all of the assignments. Right.

And I think that changed, you know, that lowered our conversion rate, but that also drastically lowered the refunds rate as well. And the assignments are hard to do. Like, people do it in like, two hours and then send it to us and we give them refund. Don't tell my co-founder I said that. Did you see a serious change when you would spend more money on ads? Like there was a direct correlation on return on your ad spend expenses.

Because when Graham did, he did a video where he launched ads for his courses. The ROI. I think at the peak one was a 32-time ROI. So for every dollar I spent, I got $32 back. Why didn't you continue running it? I didn't want to be the guy. I didn't want to be that guy. People left the comments that Graham doesn't like,

we're like, dislike unsub after. I got a big back. I don't want to say big backlash because part of it was just an honest experiment to be like, hey, let's do it. I had two different types of ads they ran against. One had a Lamborghini in the background, and one did not.

And the one that did not have a Lamborghini had a much higher conversion rate. And I made a video showing you that like it's much better to be honest and just up front. And it is about like flashy things in the back. Yep. But I didn't want to be that guy running ads. I knew that would just hurt my credibility.

Yeah, for sure. I think in the short term, I can make a lot of money, but I'm worried that, like, what would that do to the perception of me that I am running ads? Yeah, I think, you know, that's one of the problems we ran into as well, where people would like, be like, these guys sell too hard. They're super scanny, whatever. So I totally get it. You know, we made a lot of money, but like at what cost, right? Now when people see my face, they're like, oh, that's the guy that I see on ads all the time. So yeah, it's a double-edged sword.

Do you ever get recognized from the ads, and not from your actual channel, but you're like, I saw your ad. Yeah, yeah. I get recognized more from my ads now than I get recognized from my old channel. Do people recognize you and go up to you and use the pickup lines that you had previously used? Because I feel like that would be something that would happen. Sometimes, yeah, yeah, sometimes. And it's fun, but not when I'm with my family.

That doesn't make sense Come on, I'm trying to have dinner with my mom here Like don't Yeah, yeah That's funny So what are you working on now? Yeah, so now we are We're still running Jump Cut

You know, we're still running ads And still making money off of the courses But the, there's two projects that I think are More in line with what we're trying to do long term So one of them is a creative agency So now we're making ads for other people if you think about like poopery or squatty potty stuff like that have you heard of those

Squatty potty Okay yeah so we basically It's like a good Well no they had a really viral ad Oh they did yeah where where they would be like This guy's literally eating like a Like an ice cream cone from a unicorns Oops sorry

I'll put a funny image on the screen you know You can even use their B-roll A unicorn poops into this ice cream cone And a guy eats it and he's like you can make your poops better with squatty potty. And so anyway, this went super viral. I can't believe you guys never seen it. Anyway, we're going to make ads like that for other brands.

So right now we're working with a company that makes custom probiotics, where they literally, you know, you send them a sample of your poop, but they give you custom probiotics. Oh my gosh. Wow. Yeah, yeah. It's pretty fascinating. Gosh, imagine giving that to someone as a gift.

Imagine sending it to the wrong address. You mix up your mail and send it off to your aunt or something. Yeah, yeah. So that's one thing that we're doing. Oh, do you got to... We got 32 to 1, huh? On the... Return on ad spin?

Crazy dude. Instagram was the highest. Yeah. I spent nothing. So I made more money on Instagram, believe it or not, than I did from the ads with zero money spent. Yeah. So, anyway. So what was the second thing?

Oh, yeah. So the second thing we're working on is a little bit, I don't know if I should actually say it. It's basically a LinkedIn for video creators. Cool. Now I think we're going to be getting into the really interesting segment. I would say you're a bit of a dating expert. Jack is single. I'm going to put you on the spot here.

We need to give Jack some dating advice. I wouldn't say I'm a dating expert as much as I am very comfortable with myself when it comes to like meeting new people. Right. So I think dating expert means like, oh, he can get any girl he wants. That's totally not true. I get rejected all the time. And yeah, but what are you, you know, what's the goal right now? What's your journey look like?

He's going to have so many women hitting him up down in the DM. Oh. Yeah. Every time we mention this. Yeah. Have you guys mentioned that he's single on the... Yes. Okay.

Fair share messages. Oh, all right. All right. Anyway, so explain this. I guess I'm not looking for anything specific, you know. I'll take a girlfriend, you know, if that's... Just like any girlfriend? Yeah.

Anybody. Yeah. Anyone. If there's anybody out there, please. Please. No, I don't know. I'll take a girlfriend. I like stability.

I'm a fan of stability. Yeah. Yeah. What do you, how did you, okay, how did you go from being a, like a shy reserved person? How did you make that change? Did you do that yourself or did you have influence to teach you how to, yeah? We're going to title this video of something like how to get a girlfriend or something like that. So let's give some advice to everybody watching

who doesn't have a girlfriend or a boyfriend. We'll teach you how to get boyfriends and girlfriends. So everyone. We'll have lovers. That's true. All right. Where were we? How did you get a girlfriend, boyfriend?

How did you come out of your shell? Oh, yeah. Make that change. Do you have influence? Yeah, so, I mean, I was inspired by this book called The Game like a while ago where this guy kind of went out of the same journey as me where he started as this geek nerd guy and then like became like a pickup artist

and essentially became this rock star and now he's a very famous writer. So Neil Strauss, if you guys don't know. So, you know, I kind of went through the same thing, literally almost exactly like how he described in the book, except, you know, with various nuances. And at the end of the day, it was just putting myself out there and getting comfortable with the facts that some people just aren't going to like you and that's totally fine and some people are going to love you so i think you know whenever people ask me to give them like a one sentence piece of advice i always say just be really comfortable in your own skin like i think people make the mistake

of always trying to impress when they meet someone or always trying to impress when they match with someone on tinder but i think you know it's telling them up front what your interests are if even if they're really weird showing your personality even if it's really working what does interests mean like Like music taste. What if you have really boring interests? Yeah, like personal finance per se. No, no, so that's what you might think, where it's like personal finance sounds kind of boring.

But if you put that on your Tinder profile, right, I think that's a very, very strong way to get people who are into that as well and be like, yo, I love personal finance too. Yeah, but basically you have a pool of people. You have a pool of people, right? And then as soon as you say, oh, yeah, like personal finance is what goes on my mind, like 95% of the time. all of a sudden, that pool of people becomes a water droplet of people.

Yeah, but you're assuming that you could have gotten those pool of people anyway. Right? No, you're right. That's good. Sorry, not you, but like the reality is no one's going to attract everybody. I think the way to really get the person who really likes you and that you also really enjoy spending time with is putting those things out there at the beginning. Now, I'm not saying put I love personal finance in your profile. There's better ways to say it, right?

So what have you said something like Things that really turn me on Like something, something And a high FICO score Like that's a kind of more clever way to do it Where it's like It would be funny For Yukong to review his Tinder profile

Do you want to do that? Or we could cut this out Do you want to? Is that, are you a good connoisseur? Yeah, I think I'm pretty decent There's more to life than finding the perfect car. But finding the perfect car can help you get the most out of life. Like the SUV that handles everything from drop off to off road and the car that hulls groceries and

hockey teams or the van that's gone from just practical to practically family. Whatever you want, wherever you're going. Start your search at autotrater.ca. Canada's car marketplace. One second. All right. So we're going to review Jack's Tinder right now and I'm going to give you my honest thoughts. Let me just double check it beforehand to make sure. This means you can have to put a screenshot. I won't read the messages. I'll just look at the profile.

Oh no, you want to read the message. I mean, if you want me to read the messages, I'll read the messages. I'll get you a lot of views for sure. I did that one time with my friend Aria reading his Tinder messages. and it just blew up for some reason. Because people just love watching that. That could be a good title. Kong reads, Jackson, Darius.

All right. Work with a YouTuber. It lives in Santa Monica. Less than a mile away. Yes, I am that guy that did that one thing. See, I had a different bio, but it was like, hey, come on the podcast. But no girl wanted to. So I just removed that.

And I was like, well, I have to have something. So that was the first thing that came. I didn't put a lot of thought. Yeah, initially we wanted Jack to match a Tinder date and then bring a Tinder date on the podcast. But it didn't work. That's great. That would be hilarious. I would totally watch that.

Okay, so first thing, I wouldn't say work with a YouTuber. Just say, I make viral videos. I make viral videos. You don't think that's a little bit overly content? Yeah. Yeah, they're like, what kind of videos do you make? I link them the podcast. Okay, okay, fine.

So that makes sense. I would say, host of what's this called Ice Coffee podcast Yeah But also I feel like That's not an accurate representation

Of the work that I do this I would consider a passion project What if he just says work at Graham Stephan Is that bad? Yeah No is Graham Stephan Personally Personally

No no Honestly I think you should do it And then They're going to look it up Be like oh wow This gets pretty decent views I feel like that's just like an unnecessary flex, you know, if you will. Like, I don't like to be, is that braggadocious to say like, you know what I mean?

If you want to, you can add a joke in there. Just put like, the guy I work for makes a lot of money. Yeah, like the assistant. My boss makes a lot of money. Yeah, yeah. Like, there's a way you can make it. So if you don't feel good about that, if you don't feel like, that's part of your personality, you can just, you can say something that's a little bit more,

a little bit more like self-deprecating humor, but you're still, you're still, you're still, you're still flexing that, right? But like you're saying work with a YouTuber is like already the same thing, in my opinion. You think so? Yeah, it's like the same thing. Except this one, you're trying to use someone else's credit instead of, instead of being confident about your own worth. Huh.

Right? That's true. Because you do a lot of editing. A lot of really good editing. A lot of really good ideas. No, but you are the co-host of this podcast. Okay, anyway, this is my opinion. Take it with a grain of salt because I think everybody has their own personality.

And I think it's more important to be genuine than it is to like do the right thing or like, you know, whatever it is. That's just music. I don't think that's super significant. Oh, no, it's significant. Yeah. So I would change your bio to something that explains more about you. Like this doesn't tell me anything about you. Yeah, well, exactly.

It was supposed to be, it's supposed to like, I thought it would be. the people would see it and they'd be like, oh my gosh, what is it? Who is this guy? I would never have thought that. Yeah. Like it's thought provoking. No, not at all. No, yeah.

You should just. They think I'm a loser? Like, I think the best ways to do it that I've seen work really well is talk about your interest and what you like, but like write it in a really creative way, right? So in one of the guides that we put out a long time ago, one of the examples we gave was like, instead of saying, like, I like to travel. you just say anyway

I've never really traveled what I would put is like something along the lines of I love going to I love eating food at third world countries right

trying the food there huh so it's like very specific and it's not it's not like and I do I love Vietnam I love Thailand

I love you know all the Southeast Asian countries but it's specific enough to where it's interesting and you're not just saying I like travel that's interesting

yeah that's true yeah yeah so it's like you want to be you want to show them, tell them your interest, but you don't want to be generic. You also leave them with a little something too. Exactly, yeah. So then it's like if they really enjoy it's like, what? What foods have you tried there?

Right. It's something that doesn't get brought up in conversation a lot. So take whatever your interests are and then find a really interesting way to like phrase it. Okay. So that it invites conversation. Okay. That's a good picture. I wouldn't, I can't see anything there.

It's me falling on a bike. Oh, okay. That looks like a fail video from like, what's it called? Ebalm's World. That's me and Kevin Abstract. I saw him at a concert. Oh, cool. Okay.

That's me and Taylor Lautner when I was a sophomore. Yeah, well, don't put this. Don't put this picture. What is this? It's me and Taylor Lautner. Yeah, but do you want them to look at Taylor Lotter or do you want them to look at you? I kind of agree with that. And also, you look like a kid.

They're going to feel like a pedophile. Mistake Taylor Lautner for me. No, you got to remove it. of this. You look like a kid in this. It was me and my dog. That's a cool picture. Yeah, dog pictures.

You got to take a cuter picture of your dog, dude. Come on. The one red eye. Yeah. This dog looks like it should be cute, but this picture is not very flattering. I would take a good one with your dog. I would take a good one with your dog. Oh, this is cool.

I like this picture. It was my dog. Again, like, if you're going to put a picture of a dog, let's get one that's really clear and cute. This one, he looks like a ghost. Yeah. There's my tortoise biting my toe. That's odd.

I didn't know that was up there. Yeah. Honestly, you... There's me doing... Interesting. I think you have a lot of odd pictures in here. See, you said I got to give them a taste of who I am. Yeah, yeah.

I would just put like two of these and not... The majority shouldn't be odd pictures. Right. You know, because at the end of the day, Tinder is, as much as I hate to say it, is a very superficial thing. Like, they want to see what you look like. Right? And I think there's only like two pictures.

pictures in there that show what you actually look like. Taylor-Lotner one. Yeah, that's... No, not even the Taylor-Lotter one. You look like you're eight. Yeah, okay. That makes sense. And then maybe put like two or three weird ones.

But like you should have pictures that show what you actually look like because that's what they want to see. Interesting. Yeah. I agree. Okay. That makes sense. I've made some adjustments to the profile.

But dude, you have such an... Yeah, you have such an interesting life. Like, it would be a waste to not talk about all those things in your profile. Huh. And you don't have to do it in like a really like, see, I think for me, because I'm Asian, people have this perception of Asian people being like really shy and introverted. So I almost have to overcompensate. That's what I've found in the past at least.

Because you're white, I'm guessing you're just straight up American white. Because of that, you might want to play down a little bit. I don't know. It depends on your personality. But there's still ways to say, hey, I'm really interesting and I have this great life without being like super bragging about it, right? Huh. Oh, we got our visitor. Oh, we got the cat.

Oh, cute. We got Ramsey. Cute. I appreciate that advice. Yeah, I mean, like, dude, don't, I'd say just don't be afraid to put yourself out there. Yeah, like bragging a way that makes you feel comfortable, but let people know what you have going on, dude. To be honest, I kind of have the app right now. A lot of it is just kind of as a novelty because I do enjoy just kind of going on it and stuff.

I don't, I'm not really like, I don't really meet up with people and I don't really carry conversations. I kind of just have it because I think it's really fun. But let's say, let's say, I meet someone in person. Okay, can we do some role playing or something? Yeah, yeah, let's do it. Okay, so I guess I'll be the, no, Graham, of course, would be the girl. Okay, okay. And you would be approaching Graham.

So let's say a grocery store. Okay. And Graham is wearing an outfit that you like. Okay, here, why don't you approach Graham and then, and then I'll give you the critique. Okay. Okay. Because you can see me doing it on YouTube. All right.

Go for it, Jack. Okay. I've never done this before. Pressure's on. Pressure's on. Okay. Hey, ma'am. Hi.

I just wanted to say, I think that your outfit's really nice. Oh, thanks. Do you want to go? I like your... What's your name? What's your name? Graham. It's a very pretty...

name. Do you come here often? I may have seen you before. I gotta go. I'm in a hurry. Okay. So how did I do? Okay, so first off, I wouldn't call someone, I wouldn't call someone ma'am. That's number one. I try to think of other words, but lady sounded even weirder. You just don't use any noun like that. Just don't use any nouns. And then second would be I, you know, I try to stay away from generic. Like, you look, like, I like your outfit. The, the, what you start with doesn't really matter. It's really how you continue, right?

Because no matter what you say, it's going to, it's going to, they're either going to be, like, down to talk or not. Maybe she's in a bad mood. Maybe she's like, I'm in a hurry and I'm not going to talk to you, like, F off. So, I think for, for me, all right, you want to, you want to do a, you want to do a, you want to do a, Second role play. Sure. All right.

Do you want to, you want me? Yeah. Okay, yeah, okay, cool. All right. Let's see. So what are she wearing? I would look for something situation. I'm just going to, okay, sure.

So let's say we're standing in line. Cool. You know, the first thing I notice is a watch. I would say, or her watch. I would say that watch looks expensive. That's hilarious. Thanks. Appreciate it.

How much was that? Like $10,000. It's a gift. From who? Subscriber. Oh, you make YouTube videos? Yeah, I do. Do you watch YouTube?

I teach people how to make YouTube videos. Oh, no way. Small world. That's, what's your channel? Graham Steffen. Oh, cool. See, now I would say, like, have you heard of, like, Graham Steffner, whatever, and get into this conversation, right? But now it's more conversational versus, like, you're going and hitting on it.

That was actually pretty good, man. So, yeah. Holy mackerel, dude. That's a good, just to make a comment like that. Yeah, like, I don't, I generally. you know, because when you go up and compliment somebody, some women will just have like a shield up and like, oh, he's hitting on me, I can't, like, I can't deal with this.

And it gets them to be kind of uncomfortable. Some are really confident about it and they're like, hell yeah. Like, I'm totally down to talk to people. But I think when you make more of like a situational comment like that and you're trying to be a little bit more, you know, creative or funny with it, it gets them to open up a lot more easily. Wow. That was good, man.

That's crazy. Wow. And the best time to do it is at like bars or, you know, if you're like hanging out with a bunch of friends and you just kind of see someone, you just kind of start talking to them. It's really easy because if they kind of turn away, you're still there with your friends and it's totally fine. Whereas I think a lot of people put a lot of pressure on these kind of things where they're like, all right, I see this really attractive person. Whether it's a guy or a girl, I see this attractive person, I got to go talk to them. And then they get in their head and then they're like, oh my God, I got to do it. They walk up. They go, no, I got, hold on.

I can do this. I can do. And it just becomes like this whole thing. Whereas if you make it more of a casual thing and you start talking casually, now you're just a normal human being that's starting a conversation, right? And if it's a good conversation, you can say, hey, you seem really, really fun. Let's get coffee sometime or let's get dinner sometime. Jeez.

Yeah, that's what happens when you do it, when, you know, when you do those kind of things for like 10 years. Wow. What other questions do you have, Jen? I get the master here. This is like, I should be charging for this session. I mean, I don't know. I feel, I feel, I feel weird because I also feel like, don't you think that our audience would want to redirect to, like, finance or something like that? Maybe. Let's get back to, let's get back to the personal finance. Just in case, do we make sure we cover all the bases. That's true. You could always cut it out. What's your credit score? My credit score? I haven't checked in a while, but I believe it's 780, 790. That's fantastic. How many credit cards do you have? You know what's funny is my credit cards?

credit score was like really before I started watching your channel. Because you have to understand like, I dropped out of college not knowing any of this personal finance stuff. So I started making money really, really easily, or not easily, but like really quickly compared to a lot of other people. And I didn't really know how to manage it. So I just had it sitting in a bank for a very long time. Sometimes I was late on my credit card payments, not because I couldn't pay it just because

I like forgot and I didn't give it shit. And then it wasn't until I started watching your. channel that I was like oh wow you can credit card hack and get all these for all this free stuff your ad spent I could only imagine um so our ad spend was it was fine because we got two percent back cash unlimited um so so that was fine and for for a startup that's cash is better than points right um but there were a lot of like everything before that we didn't get we literally just used like a bank of america credit card wow it was crazy and so it wasn't until you know watching your and a few other channels on YouTube too that I was like, oh my gosh, I've been doing this wrong my whole life, right? Because I didn't care what my credit was. I didn't care like what credit card I used. I didn't understand the benefits you get from this. And ever since like maybe two, three years ago, I started really paying attention to that and my credit is great now.

That's awesome. So how much are you saving now? Did your financial habits change over time? Yeah, yeah, for sure. You know, one thing that really changed for me, you know, Maybe it's age. Part of it is definitely kind of like watching you and your channel. And I really loved how you have this like almost pride in being really cheap and not spending that much money. And I was like, that's pretty cool, man. Because when I was kind of like an up and coming YouTuber, I'm hanging around like these pranksters, right? And it's like these people who are just like living at large. And so I always felt like to be to fit in.

I also have to do that. And recently my mind. mindset has really changed on now I'm kind of on your side where it feels good to save money. Oh yeah. I take that to almost an extreme now where, you know, I'll go to an arcade with some friends and they'll want drinks, but it's like I brought my own vodka in my belt. It's funny. I talked about that in a video too.

I mentioned that's one of the ways to save money. I'm like, if you're going to go to the bar and get a drink, don't get the drink. Yeah. And bring your own. I mean, I don't want to endorse people sneaking things in anywhere. But, I mean. Or, or if you want to do it real legit, you can just drink beforehand, go there, maybe get a Diet Coke or something. Right.

Just chill. Or maybe a beer, like for five bucks. And then you don't have to waste money on alcohol. I used to, when I went out, I would spend like $200 a night on drinks. Are you serious? Yeah, because think about it. If you go to a club in Hollywood, right, it's like $15 a drink. And then if you buy it for five friends, that's already like $60, $70.

bucks. So imagine you're going to multiple bars a night and you're... Why are you paying for all your five friends, though? They can't get their own drinks? So it depends. Sometimes, usually my friends will buy their own drinks, but if people are coming in, for example, to visit, then I always feel like, hey, I should buy you a drink. Something like that.

Yeah, but it's not like I'm going out buying my friends. Look at you, fancy you, five friends. Wow. But yeah, man, now, now I am, I basically have... the mindset of every single dollar that I save is or that I spend is a dollar that's not making me more money. Yeah. Right. I literally learned that from your videos. That's why I was so excited to be on this podcast. I was like, I've really learned a lot from you. You've changed my perspective on a lot of things. This is so cool. Yeah. And now, so my story is not the only story like that.

A lot of YouTubers who are up and coming and they suddenly get this crap ton of money are in the same position. Right. I talk to tons of people who are like, Hey, Kong, yeah, like this one guy, well, I shouldn't say his name, but he basically, he went through our course, got successful, and now he's making, you know, he has his own course too, and now he's making like every single launch $50,000, something like that. He was like, I don't know what to do with it. I was like, watch Graham Steffin's channel. Thanks, man.

Dude, that's awesome. That makes me really happy to hear. Yeah, because, you know, you go through, look, I went through business school for like three, four years, and they didn't teach you any of that. they taught you stupid stuff like how to segment your market and all this stuff and I'm like I'm never going to use that yeah now they don't teach you the most important thing which is when you have money how do you save it how do you invest it so that you're not losing value from that money every single year by leaving it in your bank account I don't teach you that stuff right um so I think it's

really important you know what you're doing and it's it's really changed my perception on do you have a rate now that you save like 50% you try to save 60% um no I don't get as meticulous as that But generally speaking, I just don't spend that much anymore. I'm also getting old now. So, you know, I used to party a lot. And now my body can't really handle it. So I'm pretty responsible with it. I really will only spend money when it's justified.

Like, you know, I'm going to like some event with my friends or, you know, dinner for a friend's birthday or something like that. Where are you investing now? Where is it all going? So I want to say out of everything I have invested, probably 60% of it is in index funds.

Or similar, like some of it is in, what's it called? Oh my gosh, I always forget the name. No, no, no, it's the wealth front. Okay, cool. You know, it's a glorified index fund. Sure. And then 20% of it is

invested in Tesla just because I've done a lot of research on that company and after I bought a Tesla, I said, there's no way this is not going to be the future. What price did you buy in Tesla? I mean, I'm still buying like every week, but if you took the average, probably around $5,600, something like that.

Pre-split. Pre-split. Yeah. It's pretty good. That's not bad. One of the cameras. Oh, man. Oh, yeah.

So 20% is on Tesla. And then what else? The other, what are we at, 80? So the other 20% is more like a little bit more high risk investments. So I've invested in a couple of startups. And then I also have a little bit of cryptocurrency, probably like around 5% to 7%, something like that. Got it.

Yeah. Do you have any goals for the next five years, like net worth goals or income goals? Or like what's the next thing you want to hit? You know, my goals are always not monetary, to be honest. So I think with the creative agency, we want to create an ad that is really well respected within the ad world. So maybe it gets featured on ad week or like one of these like advertising magazines. I think that would be a really great goal for us to hit.

And then with the LinkedIn for video creators platform, I would like 1,000 people to be on it that are like hard. core fans. So, you know, we have a decent number of people on it, but we're still developing features figuring out what people want. There's nobody that's coming back every single day to use it yet because it's still in beta. But if we could get a thousand people that's literally coming back every day, I'd be super happy with that because that's a pretty good sign of you're getting close to product market fit. Yep. When did you start investing? So I invested in a lot of like risky stuff beforehand, to be honest, because I didn't know what else to do with my money. But I started like investing in the index funds and stuff after I watched your channel actually.

So there we go. Like two, three years ago, something like that. Um, back when you were at like 50,000 subscribers, I was like, this guy knows what he's talking about. You know, because the thing is, everybody tells me to invest in index funds. But the way that you described it of like, okay, 99% of it, you know, the market beats 99% of investors. And no matter how you time the market, like, it's always better. it's generally just better to just invest consistently every single month and get in early. And after I watched a couple of those videos of yours, I was like, that just mathematically

makes sense. That literally mathematically just makes sense. So I'm going to do that from now on. So it was probably around two or three years ago that I started like actual investing and being smart about it. What were some of the risky investments you made? I got, I got, so. it's okay now, but I invested in a startup two years ago that was pretty risky, to be honest,

and it was a pretty large amount of money. The company's called Flex. We made an ad for them. Anyway, so I invested in them. That was like a risky investment, quote, unquote, because it's a startup, right? At the end of the day, startups are just risky investments. Can you say how much you invested? Yeah, it was $50,000 into their company, and this was like basically their seed round. So they're doing really well now, but after I made that ad for them, I was like, I got to invest in this company. It's too good. They have a patent on it. They bought out their other competitor.

And it's just great. But I think in the grand scheme of things, considering I just had money in the bank and I wasn't doing anything with it, that is quite a risky investment. Have you made money on that? No, no. I mean, as with any startup, you don't make money until they get sold or they IPO, right? So it's not going to be. I mean, is it worth more than 50 grand now? Yeah.

They have to be. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, they were worth a certain valuation when I invested the 50 grand, but yeah, it's worth it. Yeah, now it's definitely higher. Okay. So on paper, at least you made a little money so far. Yeah, exactly.

Could you exit your position and like give it to some other investor? No, I mean, technically you could, but it's pretty, it's pretty hard to do that unless they're like a super hot company, like when Uber was coming up, you know, and nobody could get in. But, but, no, it's generally pretty hard to do that. let's do a quick millennial money on you so could you say some expenses that you think that you've had in the past that you think graham would not approve of oh i have i have a lot yeah let's hear it yeah um i want to hear it so i just hear how bad this is if there's anything it's bad that you think is just you look back now and you're like i regret spending that much money there's so many you guys are going to be here for five hours all right um top five so the first one is is definitely going to the bar and buying drinks. Like, that's just so expensive.

It's ridiculous. Like, every night I would go out, I would probably buy around, let's say, like, eight drinks at $15 each. So you're talking about $100 a night. And then this is not including, like, you know, if we were partying, getting like bottle service or something like that, too.

Now, is this a write-off, I'm assuming? Because... Well, yeah, everything was a write-off back then. Right, right. That's how I justified it because it was a write-off. But that and then what else? Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one.

For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea and milk. Habaniero, more like habanier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. I was always, by the way, that sober friend, because I refused to go and get a drink at the bar. I did not want to do it. Yeah, yeah, that's smart. I refused, and if that meant I would drive everybody, fine, but I just did not want to spend the money. I distasted that so much. Well, now I just bring it in my belt, put a water bottle in there, and then I'd get a Diet Coke, and then I just kind of pour I'm in.

Not that I recommend doing that. It's pretty shady, but, you know, that's who I am. I admit it. So, who else? Okay, so drinks was definitely a big one. I would say travel was a really big one, too, because I love travel, but I didn't know how to credit card hack and travel like I do now. So I was paying for, like, business class tickets to places.

Wow. Right? So, like, you know, going to New York, for example, flying business class, I'd pay like $2,500. Yeah, it was nuts, man. That was a really big one. Spending on travel and not travel hacking. Designer clothes? I never really got into designer clothes, to be honest.

See, for me, when I spend money, I always spent money on experiences. Like, these more material items weren't that important to me. So if they had no function to it, I generally wouldn't spend that much money. There were a couple items that I did that I splurged on, but I don't think, there's nothing that I'm not proud of in terms of, like, clothing. Well, it doesn't seem like you're too, you were too crazy on spending or anything. It sounds like you're doing. No, no, yeah, it wasn't like I was spending way more than I should have.

It was just like I wasn't smart about it. That's all. That makes sense. So those, that's two. What was the third one? What about rent, housing? Thinking about should I say this or not? That's a yes.

So... If it's PG-rated, you should say it. Oh, no, it's definitely PG. I'm just talking about from a legal perspective. Okay, so rent was actually usually fine because I spent a lot on rent, but most of it was written off. Office.

Yeah, as an office. Because back then, when I was making YouTube videos, I was literally using most of my apartment, you know, for vlogs, for marketing materials that can. kind of thing. Could I have spent less on rent? Yeah, probably. But I don't necessarily regret that. How much was rent? Rent at its highest was $6,000. Wow. I think I remember that place because it had a view. It's Hollywood or downtown it looked like? Yeah, yeah. It was in Hollywood and well, $6,000. I only paid that

for like six months because I was living month to month. It was usually around $5,000. prior to that. Wow. Yeah, like 4 to 5,000, depending on which floor I lived and where I moved. The mortgage here, by the way, just the mortgage, I think,

is 50, now it's $5,200 a month for the mortgage. Wow. Yeah, this was way, put a lot down. This is way bigger without property tax. Well, you know, in hindsight,

I wish I had just bought a house. Yeah. Right? Because I didn't understand, because I was like, you know what? I don't want to buy a house. This was literally my mindset.

I was like, I don't want to buy a house because I don't want to pay the interest. Like, that's how, that's how stupid I was. I was like, I don't want to pay interest. I'm just going to save up until I can buy the whole house in cash.

I didn't understand that you could use the money that you don't spend on the house to invest in the market and you're making more than the interest that you're paying. Right. Or at the very least. And that's a right off. Exactly. Yeah, I didn't know any of these things. Right.

So my justification was I'm just going to spend the money on this baller apartment and I'm going to save up until I can buy a house in cash. That was my goal. I know better now. So now I'm looking for a house. There we go. In the worst time possible. It's tough, but you know what? I think good deals are to be had.

They're out there. You're just got to look. They take forever to find. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure. I've not found a good deal in L.A. Since I started looking. Oh, I started seriously, not seriously. But I wanted to buy another, like I wanted to buy an office space originally here.

And I've been looking since March. Nothing. There was one that I loved that was a big, like, open concept spot. Show it to you afterwards, but it's sold, sold a little bit higher than what I was willing to pay for it. Okay, got it. It worked out in the end. How do you calculate that, though? Because if it's a little bit higher than you're willing to pay, but you're willing to keep it for like 10 years, doesn't that just justify, like, the higher price as long as you enjoy the property?

Not really. I felt there was a cap in terms of the value that I would get from it versus how much I'm willing to tie up in that property. It's a really unique space that's been on the market for like a year. and you just need one specific buyer for that. And so I was worried that in the event I needed to sell it or get a tenant, it would be really hard to get a tenant or a buyer. So there's just a risk that I figure out, I'm willing to take a risk up to a certain dollar amount

and then anything over that, it just doesn't pencil out in case something were to have. I see what you mean. Okay, okay. That makes sense. Got it. Did we ever get, because I don't, honestly, I don't remember, but did you ever say exactly how, what you use to be able to exit your share? shell or to be able to turn to an extra route do we not really um i so yeah in order to get out of my shell i i talked about the game um and it really just came down to literally going out and talking to random people on the street and at bars and just doing it yeah like i literally just did that for like

how uncomfortable was that for you extremely uncomfortable at first like i was that guy that was like oh my god i can't believe i'm doing this getting like mini panic attack yeah go go yeah yeah Yeah, essentially. You know, and, like, it was just really, really hard for the first year or two of doing that because I forced myself to go out there. And it wasn't even just like I was trying to get girls' numbers. I was literally talking to random dudes. I was literally talking to old ladies.

I was literally talking to old men. Like, I would force myself to go do those things. And even when it was an old lady, I would, like, you know, I would be, like, drenched in sweat. He'd be like, that looks expensive. Yeah, yeah. It looks like an expensive one. But yeah, just doing that so many times, I came to the realization that you just need to have fun with it. You know, I met a few people along the way that were just kind of like really naturally good at talking to people out at the bars and out in public.

And I realized that this is not really something that you have to be like mentally prepared for. You have to have scripted lines. It's a mindset, right? It's a mindset of I don't care what other people think about me. I'm going to go out and have fun. And if you don't respond to me in a positive way, then I don't care. I have my friends over here.

I can go back to my great life that I'm living. And so it almost came down to me accepting that I have a good life and being proud of who I am versus like, I hate who I am and I have to impress people when I meet them, if that makes any sense. That makes sense. So it was a mindset shift. And once I had that mindset shift,

And I went out and stopped caring about what people think and founds like, you know, if I got rejected, I started finding that totally okay. That's when everything changed for me. And what about now? Do you ever get nervous now when you're testing yourself? Or is it all just so easy for you? No, I don't get nervous. I would say the closest is like if I, you know, if I see somebody who I really look up to,

like for example, if I saw, I don't know. Graham Staffen, yeah. Or if I saw like, I don't know, Elon Musk or something and we're at some networking event, I'd be like, oh, like, you know, I get a little bit excited. But I don't think I'm ever like nervous to the point where I'm drenched in sweat like I was before. So you think you cured it? You think you got over that hurdle? Is it like riding a bike where once you get over it, then you never have to worry about it again? I don't think so.

I think it's very similar to, like, working out. you know you always have that voice in your head that says like you can't do this you're worse than them um you suck uh whatever and it's kind of like working out it's like no i don't want to go today i'm too tired i'm too lazy like i got too much stuff to do you're always gonna have that voice but you get better at dealing with that voice and um and and and you know how to handle it if that makes sense so you're so i always have that those like thoughts going into a situation like that but i'm just better uh i just handle it better now than i did before yeah So Kong, thank you so much for coming on.

This has been really fun, really good advice, and we'll report back to you on Jack's Tinder profile. All right. Excited to hear about it. Pleasure meeting you. With that said, you guys, thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate it. Make sure, oh, you got to tell them to destroy the like button for the YouTube algorithm.

Look right in that camera right there and say destroy the... All right. I want you guys to do one thing for me right now. Just one thing. And that is to destroy and demolish that like button. right now for the YouTube algorithm. We should get a compilation together of just every guest, being like, destroy the like button.

That was a good one. I almost wanted to say that like seductively, but then I was like, I don't think that's G-rated. Tell the like button how expensive it is. Make sure to obviously subscribe. You could add us on Instagram, links down below in the description. And now Weble, by the way,

brought back the promotion of two free stocks. They upped their ante. They did. And now it's even better. This is the best offer they've ever had. had both free stocks that you're going to get are valued at minimum $8 and all the way up to $1,600. So yeah, it's actually a really good deal. Back in the old day, the first stock was only like $2, and the second stock was $8.

Now they're both minimum $8. So if you want those two free stocks, claim them down below in the description and let us know which two free stocks you get. Thank you so much for watching. And until next time. Until next time. Excellent. Great out of it.

Cool. All right. Make sure I'm in frame here. Yeah, there we go. Let me scoot over? Oh, no, you're just right there. Okay, okay, cool. Yeah, you're good, you're good, you're good.

Cool. Let's start. You want to intro us, Grant? Yeah, what episode are we? 20th. How much is a podcast made so far? It's 5,700. 5,700.

Okay. That's a good amount. Yeah. Wow. What, 20th you said? 20th. 20th. Okay.

Look into this one.